Supervision & Support
Each IRTG-MEDIS student will be assigned a Thesis Advisory Committee (TAC), which will monitor and evaluate the progress of the project and the individual academic development. The TAC is composed of the IRTG primary supervisors and two additional members of the DIGS-ILS/DIPP faculty. One member of the TAC must be a professor at the TUD (her/his affiliation determines the faculty through which the PhD Degree is awarded). The TAC members will be selected by the IRTG primary supervisors along with the PhD candidate. At least two TAC members must be affiliated with different research institutes and at least one member must be from outside the IRTG 3019. The committee may include additionally up to two members – group leaders from the IRTG at University of Zürich or ETH Zürich. This highly successful concept is one of the main features of the PhD programme and has proven to be highly effective, benefitting both doctoral researchers and PIs. The TAC will review the scientific progress of the PhD project at least once a year, will suggest lab rotations to ETH/UZH, further training and possible collaborations, will evaluate the individual development of the doctoral student, will ensure that experimental data are driven towards publishable results, and will provide both general and technical advice to ensure that a high-quality PhD thesis is completed within 3 to 4 years.
The TAC will accompany each PhD student throughout the thesis work. Each member of the TAC can be approached individually at any time during the PhD period for guidance and recommendations. Doctoral researchers have their TAC on at least 4 official occasions. The PhD student needs to write an initial report within the first 3.5 months of thesis work as the basis of the initial report TAC meeting, which should be held at 4 months after starting the thesis work. The TAC members will evaluate the project and the experiment outline, give advice in project planning and define whether advanced method courses are necessary to deepen the students’ knowledge needed for the successful conduction of the project. In this TAC meeting, the data management plan will also be discussed.
The 1st annual TAC meeting is to discuss the progress the doctoral student has made and to recommend the scheduling of the exchanges to Zürich. The 2nd annual TAC meeting focuses on specific aspects of discussing the necessity of additional exchanges to Zurich and developing a publication strategy. The 3rd annual TAC meeting (after 33 months) will be scheduled to review the results and to set a time frame for the finalization of the thesis. If the thesis will need a fourth year to be completed, a 4th annual TAC meeting (42 months) will be performed to review the very final results and finalize all aspects related to the thesis. For each TAC meeting, PhD students prepare a written report and a presentation on the current status of their thesis work. At the end of each TAC, the scientific performance of the PhD student is evaluated and recommendations are made for future work.
With respect to MD students, the student is intensively supervised by an individual three-member doctoral committee. Within the one-year curriculum, three TAC meetings will be scheduled at 3, 6 and 9 months after starting the thesis work to ensure the success by providing general and technical advice, evaluating the project progress, suggesting exchanges to Zurich, and setting a time frame to finish the experimental work within the year. The successful finalization of the thesis is aimed to be done before completing the study of Medicine and ideally not later than two years after the start of the thesis. A fourth TAC meeting may be arranged in the second year of the thesis to monitor the progress of the student on finalizing the MD thesis and address any possible issues.